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Thoughts
And prayers
Adorable
Like cake in a crisis
We’re bleeding out

While you deliberate
Bodies accumulate

Sit and talk like Jesus
Try walkin’ like Jesus
Sit and talk like Jesus
Talk like Jesus
Talk talk talk talk
Get the fuck out of my way

Don’t be the problem, be the solution
Don’t be the problem, be the solution
Don’t be the problem, be the solution
Problem, problem, problem, problem

Faith without works is
Talk without works is
Faith without works is
Talk without works is
Faith without works is
Dead, dead, dead, dead

Sit and talk like Jesus
Try walkin’ like Jesus
Sit and talk like Jesus
Try walkin’ like Jesus
Try braving the rain
Try lifting the stone
Try extending a hand
Try walkin’ your talk or get the fuck out of my way

“Talk Talk” is the third single off A Perfect Circle’s forthcoming album. Like “Doomed” and “Disillusioned,” it is very much a political statement about the current state of our society.

Another school shooting yesterday, another 17 dead kids and adults. I’m over here trying to figure out how to get back to making art–to write, to collage, to just absorb the world and here it comes at me screaming in terror in the dark before the sun comes up. I don’t know what to do, except resist.

Art is a form of resistance. We have to keep resisting, reconnecting to the resonance, to borrow Maynard’s phrase. I resist.

This is timely, as we were talking about this last night after dinner–that I let myself be interrupted and find it difficult to get back into the Flow. So it’s yet another sign that I need to get back to work…

It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone. Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses…

Note; the bottom of this post will be continuously updated with resources and action links. Please add any useful resources in the comments, to be added to the list.

This topic needs no introduction; if you are not already aware of the crisis and political turmoil I’m not sure this document could reach you anyway. This is for the woke scientist, scholar, and other academics ready to fight fear with resistance. I’m not exactly sure how to best arrange this document but it must be written. My goal is less to review the state of affairs, of which I’m sure you are aware, but rather to provide concrete tips and guidelines so that you can break free from ‘oh-dearism’ and leap into action.

My childhood was spent outside. I ran through brambles and tall grass, rode my pony with no saddle or bridle–just an “Indian” bridle made of a few twists of baling twine. If I fell off (or more likely, got scraped off on a low-hanging branch), I walked until I caught her, and I got back on.

“Unless something’s broken,” my mother said more than once, “You get back on.”

One bright summer afternoon when I was about 12, I was riding with my friend April Flagg, whose family ran Herefords on the farm behind ours. She had a little Arab cross, and I had my pony–Cocoa–and we were pelting hellbent for leather across the open pasture. My pony decided that she’d had enough, and started an arc towards the barn. I wasn’t done with our running, and I pulled on the left rein to pull her back behind April’s mare. She was stronger than I was, and had a hard mouth from years of being yanked on by yahoos, including me.

She kept her arc to the barn.

Since I didn’t understand force, or physics, and I was getting pissed, I yanked hard on the left rein.

Hard enough to flip us over.

(For those of you who’ve never ridden a horse: We have reins to control the head–if you control the head, the rest of the horse has to follow. This is why, if you are ever on a runaway horse, gently guide the horse into a circle, then make the circle tighter and tighter.

Please note that this tactic will not work if you are in a forest.)

When I regained consciousness, the sky was bright blue. The first thing I did was check to make sure I hadn’t landed in a cowpie. I still had my helmet on. Then I checked to see if I remembered who I was and where I lived: 512 West Highland Road. Yep. Me.

I got up and walked–towards the barn–where I saw my pony tied to the fence. I was in the process of untying her and putting my foot back in the stirrup when my mom barreled up the driveway in our big blue Chevy van. April must have run into the house to have her mom call mine. No idea how long I was unconscious.

“What are you doing?” she yelled out the window as she threw the van into park.

“You told me to get back on if I fell off and nothing was broken. I have to get back on.” And before she could get out of the van to stop me, I swung my right leg up and over, and turned the pony away from the barn.

She did manage to get through the gate in time to stop me from going further than a few feet away. The sun was really bright, and I could tell she was scared.

She took me to the ER and was told I had a concussion, and that I should not be allowed to sleep until it was my normal bedtime. I spent the rest of the day on the dark green Springsteel couch, drinking 7-Up and watching television, none the worse for wear.

There is more to this that will come, maybe later, when I have more time. I have been trying to figure out how to get back to being that fearless kid–the kid who got back on when she fell off.

(I fell off less often than you might expect, but my last horse had a hearty, twisty buck and I liked to ride without a saddle in the middle of winter in northern Ohio. Dumb? Probably.)

While sorting through a box of old photos just now–ran across one of my mom posing in a bright purple bathing suit next to a pool–Myrtle Beach vacation, when I was 9.

I nearly drowned in that pool (saved by a stranger when I got into deep water while my dad was asleep on the deck). The gasping kind of drowning where my head popped above the surface as I launched myself straight up. I could see my dad, fast asleep in the sun.

This did not put me off swimming. I learned how to swim the following summer and we had an above-ground pool that I practically lived in during high school.

What happened to that kid? Where did she go?

With Ziggy (Nitzinger 1978-2010) 1988 Summit County Fair Fourth place overall Versatility thanks to our second place finish in barrel racing. He took care of me.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling overwhelmed, sad for absolutely no reason, and just wanted to stay in bed and cry all day. I haven’t had an episode like this in quite a long time so it scared the absolute shit out of me. I texted a few very good friends who know me well and who would know exactly what I needed to hear, I took my medication, and slowly, throughout the day, things got better. I still felt exhausted. I still felt sad. I still felt anxious about being sad but today I’m better. Rationally, my brain knew this would be temporary, but physiologically, I was already in that head space, and there was nothing I could do to “snap” out of it.

My old therapist used to call this “getting on the bus.” She said to me, “Kelly, if you saw a bus being hijacked, would you choose…